Cyber Sparks Read online

  I sipped my licorice McCormick’s, then tossed and turned on the sofa in the dark for an hour or so, trying to figure out new career routes to try. Sports model, virtual holo-host on one of the podnet channels, or maybe my friend Rinko would let me go into business with her, modeling her lingerie.

  Restless, I changed into my sports bra and shorts and ran a few miles on the inverted grav track, a kind of oval treadmill that can flip gravity and let you run on the ceiling as well. I’d fallen off it once and shattered my shoulder, so I made sure I was harnessed in.

  A call came through from the hall terminal while I was winding down in the steam room afterward. Rudy! I rubbed my eyes and sucked in a hot breath. Not wanting to slip on the tiles, I jiggled out in my flip-flops.

  The screen read, ID Withheld. I palmed the feed open anyway. Maybe Rudy was calling from an out-of-town terminal.

  No sooner had the caller’s silhouette begun to pixilate when I realized, to my horror, that I was naked, and the screen directly faced—

  “Allie?”

  I ducked for my life.

  “Allie, you there? The screen’s all misted up.”

  Thank God. Twice, as it wasn’t Rudy but Lenore. I resurrected and, on my knees, slowly rose to face her. “Hey, Lenore. How are you?” The screen de-misted itself.

  “Raring to go, sweetie.” She mooched in for a close-up, whispered, “You forgot, didn’t you.” Nuts. “One word—spree.” She gave a sarcastic nod.

  “Sorry, babe. Today’s been a freaking knot.”

  She pressed something at the side of her display, then stepped back with a twirl to reveal her dazzling new couture. All tasteful, all designer, all very off-world and figure-hugging. Lenore and I had been closer than sisters for the past several years, and I can say from experience that she never held surprises. What you saw was what you got, from her airy, pre-college conversations to her gasp-worthy female curves. In a galaxy spinning on subterfuge, a genuine soul like Lenore was rarer than pyrofluvium.

  “Off the charts, babe.” I pointed off-screen, left and right at the same time, to demonstrate. “You should go out just as you are—forget the mask.”

  She giggled, blew me the kiss I’d coveted as long as I’d known her, and crouched in front of the display again. “Okay, get dressed and I’ll go round up the others. Buzz me when you reach the vane. And Allie…today’s the day.”

  My dutiful groan made her playfully wag her finger. So they were still harping on about that.

  “You’re looking rundown, girl.” Her grave headshake had all the weight of a fairy’s tut-tut. “And I’m not taking no for an answer. It’ll get rid of that stress for good. Trust me, a girl without an omnipod is a girl without a plan.”

  “I’ll hazard a guess that wasn’t Bronte.” A cheap shot, I know, but I’ve never had much patience for people who speak in advert slogans.

  “No. And I’ll hazard a guess that isn’t Dolce and Gabbana.” She nodded over my shoulder, to the hall mirror showing…my full naked rear.

  If I wasn’t already steamed pink, I’d have glowed red with shame.

  “And you’ve just recorded me, haven’t you?”

  She quirked an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “Okay, Lenore. Good one. You got me. But if that footage should ever turn up on the podnet, you know what would—”

  “Feeling about ready to try that omnipod then, are we?” As she whistled tunelessly to herself, taunting me like she used to in the old days, I gasped for air once more. But it wasn’t the world outside choking me, that claustrophobic tangle; this time, I wanted to be smothered and inspected and otherwise lavished with attention…but I wanted it with Lenore, in bed, right now.

  I guess it just wasn’t my day.

  But the day wasn’t over yet.

  “I might keep hold of this footage, you know, for posterior…I mean posterity.” She winked. Good pun, babe—cruel but good. “But then again, I might—”

  “All right, all right—you win.” I held up my hands in surrender. “I’ll give it a whirl.”

  “Yay.” She grinned and clapped rapidly like a pixie. “You’re gonna love this.”

  “I’d better.”

  “You will. Soon, sweetie.” Something distracted her and she dashed away before I had a chance to reply.

  Buoyed for the first time in days, I picked out an expensive phosphorescent all-in-one and had the styler-bot braid my straight blond hair into pigtails. Lenore had always liked that look, said it made everyone go weak at the knees.

  Outside, my building smelled of burning tires. The Sandra Lynn Street sidewalk conveyer was out of order, and so was the repair workers’ fume extractor. Breathing in a little pollution never bothered me—Ireton Four has its share of mining dust clouds—but the people of Washington, D.C. dodged it even more than they did the oh-dear (ODEAR—Off-world Draft for Emergency Aid Relief). No, they rarely suffered anything they couldn’t predict or regulate themselves, including the world around them.

  Joggers and corporate types alike crammed themselves into the lift for the commuter wheel upwind from the smoke, most of them talking into their own omnipod headsets or bobbing their heads to a private audio track. I got one or two appreciative hand gestures, but no one went out on a limb. Sights, sounds, even smells—they lived in a kind of personal cocoon whenever they ventured out.

  My own experience with the omnipod would change my life forever, but back then, I didn’t want to skip reality any more than I had to. Sleep was the time for dreams, and Mum had taught me the intricacies of lucid dreaming when I’d hit puberty. It had helped me explore and indulge the thwarted fantasies I’d agonized over in daily life, giving me a sense of self I’d never have had without it. At fourteen, it was through lucid dreaming I first came to terms with the fact that I loved women. At sixteen, a stranger I met in a dream guided me onto the famous brass bridge at the Selene pageant and told me that was where I belonged. At twenty-two, I stood in that very spot on finals day. And nothing could ever take that away from me. I saw no reason to hide from everything I’d striven to become.

  Especially not inside some suck-bait electronic headgear.

  As we rose toward the station, sunlight glimmered between the spokes of the giant horizontal commuter wheel above. Near the hub, it created a rapid flicker of sun and shadow that no one suffering from epilepsy could stand for long. During my first weeks in D.C., I’d had to take sedatives, as the wheel permanently looming overhead had given me intense claustrophobia. That and bloody awful lucid dreams.

  Shuttlecraft formed a busy circle around the wheel’s rim, waiting to drop travelers and freight at the dome-shaped checkpoint hangars. I glanced to the hub tower to read the time. Just after four. I turned away from my fellow commuters and slyly pressed my fingerprints in coded sequence on the pterosaur tattoo on the back of my hand. My credit balance flashed twice in the middle of the nano-ink.

  Seventeen wings, one jenny.

  My personal security language for seventeen million, one hundred thousand credits. Thank God they reimbursed the whole amount.

  Yep, I could afford to splash out a little today.

  I devoured a diet BLT sandwich from the station cafe, then took the next lift up when the wheel stopped. My spoke had had a new paint job inside, and the corporate logo whooshed electronically down the ceiling half of the cylinder—each spoke was privately leased to a separate company, to ensure high standards were maintained. Hundreds
of people drifted by in either direction to a choice of dozens of stops, blissed inside their omnipods, gibbering away, at once gregarious and anti-social. I did the daily crossword with my e-pen while the spoke conveyor carried me to the central hub.

  “Allie, over here!” Lenore flipped up her omnipod visor and threw me a wave.

  I could tell who her two companions were from their hair color and their figures. Rinko was obese and had a long black perm. She managed a racy lingerie store that you could only visit on the podnet.

  The redhead with a bob cut and a narrow ass was Phyllis Briar, daughter of phantom DJ Gideon Briar, a man everyone had heard but few had ever seen. He’d broadcasted his illegal radio show from somewhere in orbit, pinging the signal between the thousands of satellites like a manic pinballer. But no one had heard his show for months. Despite his anti-government spiel, few listeners took him seriously—he was always good for a laugh, though, and brightened up the evenings with his satire. The authorities said they’d stopped looking for him. Coincidence? And though she used to boast about him every chance she got, Phyllis hadn’t mentioned her dad for some time.

  In customary fashion, neither woman lifted her visor to look me in the eye. They were so omnied in, I was lucky to get a wave.

  “Hey, Lenore.” At least she’d deigned to unmask. “So you finally talked me round. This is the day I plug in, huh?”

  “You don’t know what you’ve been missing, doll. I won’t say any more—I’ll not ruin Reggie’s pitch for him.” She wasn’t wearing makeup, and at close range it made her look tired. “It’s a whole new world. You’ll be able to talk to anyone at any time, change anything, buy any—”

  “Reggie’s pitch,” I reminded her, suddenly intrigued by the prospect of being able to reinvent myself this way. I knew nothing about it, but it had clearly done wonders for Lenore.

  She put her hand to her mouth, then flipped her visor forward over her face. “Come with me.”

  She grabbed my hand and led me under the giant copper weather vane into the Spiral Shopping Mall that wound down to street level. The other women turned in unison, chatting away into their headsets. Rinko and Phyllis were gossip gurus. Their caustic humor had had me in stitches many a time over the years. But I hadn’t spoken to them much since my Semprica incident—I’d been too busy chasing job opportunities.

  I was about to join their parallel existence at last—their world within a world. They’d always said it was inevitable. I guess they were right. There’s only so much railing a girl can do before she gets flattened by the fashion express.

  Reggie’s tacky-sounding omnipod salon, Scheherazade’s, was anything but. The moment I stepped through the bead curtain, my eyes bugged at the sheer imagination on display. Cubicles made up to look like jungle caves, spas, grav chambers, palace bedchambers, even orbital racers, all appeared authentic, no expense spared. The burgundy carpet and gold-ribbed wallpaper oozed exotic elegance. A touchscreen database panel outside each cubicle boasted, in LED lettering, More Dreams Than You Can Imagine.

  Lenore must have buzzed Reggie over her headset. Without looking our way, he spun from his current clients at the far end of the salon and danced sideways until he reached us. He was a smooth mover, and in his white tux jacket with three-quarter-length sleeves and dark trousers he resembled a VIP punter at Rick’s Cafe Américain in Casablanca. He had a narrow, innocent, easy-on-the-eyes face like a mouse.

  Unfortunately, he also had to open his mouth. “Lenore, darling. Ca va?”

  “Comme ci, comme ca, Reggie. But we’ll be tiptop if you fix our friend up with an SP3 Deluxe. Her name’s Allegra, and she’s a virgin.”

  I grabbed her toward me. “Hey, what the f—”

  “An omnipod virgin,” she assured me, then turned back to Reggie. “Is my Loyalty Card good for a guest package?”

  “Of course, of course.” His hyper camp manner was natural caffeine to be around, and I wasn’t really in the mood. “Use whichever card you like, darling. What my sweet Lenore wants, Reggie gets.” He faced me, his smogged-up eyes as big as wing mirrors. “Allegra—beautiful Allegra, formerly the Face of Semprica, now my new favorite guest. Enchanté.”

  “How’s it going, Reggie?”

  “Swimmingly, ma chérie.” After kissing my hand, he invited me through a translucent door marked Executive Consult Room. I turned to roll my eyes at Lenore but she wasn’t following.

  “We’ll wait for you here, doll.” She fought against the others as they pulled her toward the jungle cave cubicle. “If we’re not here, you’ll know where to find us.” A topless black man wearing jeans and no headset opened the cubicle door for them. Lenore giggled and entered. Jealousy broiled inside me.

  “Now then, Allegra, darling—first things first. You’ve never omnied before, not even on someone else’s set, is that right?”

  “Correct.”

  He rubbed his hands together. “Nothing to it, my love. It’s easier if we hook you up right away and then I’ll key in your preferences manually while you acclimate to the pod sensation. Okay?”

  “Can I sue you if I upchuck?”

  His exaggerated laugh suited him as much as it did the garish nightclub and sunset murals decorating the walls of this shiny, dome-shaped room. He told me to sit on one of the six reclining leather chairs that stood around his central console. My chair smelled of boot polish.

  “Here you are, darling. If I give this to you—” he tore the plastic wrapper off a brand new turquoise-and-pink headset, “—and you put it on…exactly as it is, it will automatically adjust to fit the shape of your head. That’s it.”

  It felt like a domeless helmet and was cushioned all around. The visor was down, so I couldn’t see a thing.

  “One second, my love. Let me just key you in to the network. The scanner ID’d you on your way in, so this should be over in a jiffy. Any minute now. Yes, and there…we…go.”

  A sudden forward-wheeling sensation knocked me for a loop, like a positive-g theme park ride I wasn’t ready for. I mouthed the word Shit but no sound emerged. Instead, the buzz of an electric razor rattled on my brain pan for at least five seconds. It didn’t hurt, though, just made me cringe and cock my head the way fingers fondling polystyrene do. Absolute whiteness flooded my vision.

  The forward-wheeling sensation ended with a quiet thump, as though I’d just been dunked in a sink full of milk.

  Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeep.

  I thought I heard Reggie’s voice trying to reach me through the walls of a deep cyber-oyster.

  Beep. Bee-beep.

  A few moments of crunching static. Unreachable itching in my inner ear. A low, muffled ring, like those you register by tapping on a tabletop during a hearing exam, gradually sharpened to electronic syllables, then to clear human words. Spoken by an oddly familiar voice.

  “…last time you will hear my voice. Do not adjust your headset. This is not your product speaking. This is your wake-up call, activated by the first bonding of an omnipod to your neural network. You are in danger. Do not trust this apparatus. More and more users are becoming susceptible to neural interference after frequent use. Remember, your brain is not a plug ’n’ play—the omnipod interface uses filters that reroute and intensify your neural impulses. This can lead to hallucinations and intermittent psychosis. Omni calls its product the last word in living. Don’t let it be the last word of your life.

  “Less than half of one percent of people are capable of hearing this frequency,
so the onus is on you to spread the word. Live free, see the wonders of the world through your own eyes before it’s too late. Whatever you do, do not trust your omnipod. The next time you unplug it will be the last time you will hear my voice. Do not adjust you headset. This is not your product speaking…”

  My legs shook, and the wake of a queasy upwelling tightened my stomach and my chest until bitter nausea burned my throat. Any more of this and the doomsayer’s words would splinter the cork in my head and I’d vomit like Vesuvius…into a brand new omnipod.

  I gripped the underside of the visor. Before I could wrench it up, the entire rig lifted free and the milk began to drain out of my vision. I gulped warm air and lurched forward, gasping.

  “Jesus, what the fuck was that?” Though I swallowed the urge to throw up, there was something uncomfortably unreal about reality this side of the thwarted cyber induction. “Reggie, what in God’s name is going on? Someone planted a virus in that omnipod—it fed me a line of shit that beat your line of shit into a cocked hat. I mean, it had me convinced the world is coming to an end. What is it with me and lines of shit? Semprica, the bank, now this place. Do I have a nametag or something that says, Hi, my name’s Allegra—I’m on a diet, feed me your lines of shit?”

  “I must apologize for not warning you sooner, Allegra.” Reggie, having lost a few wigwams of his camp, frowned into his central console as he typed up a storm. “That has only happened here twice in four years. It is an illegal broadcast that somehow jams the virgin omnipod upload—its frequency competes with the interface link, and only a tiny number of clients are able to hear the message. To most it doesn’t register, even subliminally. That section of your brain must be highly receptive. But don’t worry, the message cannot repeat after the virgin uplink.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because your brain has now closed that neural port, to protect itself. In the future it will only respond to our remote uplink, the signature of which has been bioelectrically imprinted.”